Obama Seeks Global Uranium Fuel Bank

Plan could counter Iran's weapon quest

By Bryan Bender
June 8, 2009

President Obama told Muslim leaders that "any nation should
have the right to access peaceful nuclear power."

WASHINGTON - As part of a new strategy to stop Iran
from obtaining nuclear weapons, President Obama plans to seek the
creation of the first-ever international supply of uranium that would
allow nations to obtain fuel for civilian nuclear reactors but limit the
capacity to make bombs, according to senior administration
officials.

Many arms-control specialists consider the idea of a
"fuel bank" controlled by the International Atomic Energy Agency a key
way to test the sincerity of Iranian leaders, who maintain that their
enrichment program is only for civilian use and necessary because they
cannot be assured of energy supplies from other countries.

Many specialists believe an internationally managed
fuel bank could also remove the "peaceful use" justification for other
nations that might be trying to use a civilian nuclear program as cover
to make nuclear weapons.

"We want to give the Iranians an opportunity to
demonstrate their commitment to peaceful nuclear energy and serve as a
new model," said a top administration official involved in crafting
arms-control policy. "What we can do is create a system of incentives
where, as a practical matter for countries that want nuclear power, the
best way to obtain their fuel and to handle fuel services is through a
new international architecture."

The IAEA, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, is
also pursuing the fuel-bank idea, and in a pair of reports Friday
highlighted the urgency of the issue. It said that Iran has expanded the
number of centrifuges enriching uranium, making it more difficult for UN
inspectors to keep track of the nation's disputed nuclear program. The
agency also said it had discovered traces of processed uranium at a
second site in Syria, where Israel in 2007 bombed a North
Korean-designed reactor that US intelligence says was meant to produce
weapons-grade plutonium.

Obama has outlined a goal of ridding the world of
nuclear weapons and has pledged to reduce the US arsenal and take other
steps toward that long-term vision. In his closely scrutinized speech to
the Muslim world last week, he declared that "we have reached a decisive
point" on the Iran nuclear weapons issue and that he is committed to
"preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that could lead this
region and the world down a hugely dangerous path."

But he also said that "any nation - including Iran -
should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power" if it follows
nuclear weapons nonproliferation agreements.

The uranium fuel bank is a key building block of
Obama's overall strategy, which is aimed at helping limit the further
spread of the technology needed to build nuclear weapons - the same
technology that provides nuclear energy.

The basic idea is to have a relatively small, but
guaranteed supply of low-enriched uranium available as a backup should a
country's supplies of civilian nuclear fuel from other nations be cut
off for political or other reasons. Of the dozen or so countries that
now can enrich uranium, several - such as Brazil and South Africa - do
so to guard against such disruptions, not to build nuclear weapons.

The most advanced proposal calls for the IAEA to
maintain a uranium supply for purchase by member states. The agency has
already received $150 million in pledges from various countries and the
Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonpartisan arms-control
advocacy group. The agency's 35-member board of governors is scheduled
to begin debating the issue at a meeting later this month.

Russia and Kazakhstan have offered to house an
agency-supervised fuel bank, while Germany has called for the creation
of a multinational enrichment company under the auspices of the
IAEA.

"This is an idea that has pretty broad support," said
Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a
nonpartisan Washington think tank. "It addresses a problem that has been
around for a long time. Nations that can make low-enriched uranium for
nuclear power can use the same industrial capacity to make highly
enriched uranium" for nuclear weapons.

Obama's support for the idea dates to his days as a
senator from Illinois, when he cosponsored legislation calling for a US
commitment to a fuel bank. The senior administration official, who was
not authorized to speak publicly about internal deliberations, said
Obama plans to discuss the issue with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
at a summit in Moscow next month.

But there remain significant political and economic
hurdles to the fuel bank's creation, according to several US and
European officials and nonproliferation specialists.

For example, some sectors of the nuclear power
industry fear losing customers or profits if there is a new
international provider of uranium. There are four main providers that
sell nuclear energy fuel, one in Russia, one in the United States, one
in France, and a German-British-Dutch consortium. But they can sell only
to countries approved by their governments.

"Some in the industry are concerned that the material
in the fuel bank may take away clients from them or the material could
be dumped on the market [and] temporarily depress prices," said a
European diplomat directly involved in the IAEA deliberations who was
not authorized by his government to speak publicly.

Proponents, however, insist that at any given time
the international supplies would be quite small and would have no
measurable impact on the market.

For example, the Russian proposal calls for a supply
of 120 tons of low-enriched uranium, according to IAEA documents
obtained by the Globe, while the IAEA plan calls for between 60 tons and
80 tons - amounting to about a three-year supply for a 1,000-megawatt
light water reactor, the most common type around the world, which
produces enough electricity for about 1 million homes.

There is also skepticism from some non-nuclear
nations who fear the move is designed to deprive them of their right
under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to develop their own civilian
nuclear power industries.

But an IAEA official insists the fuel bank would not
have that effect. "No one is talking about restricting the rights of any
country," said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly
about the issue.

Indeed, many specialists predict Iran will still
insist on enriching uranium even with an international supply available
for its nuclear reactors. But such a decision by Tehran would be new
evidence that it has military uses in mind for its nuclear program and
help build more international pressure to punish it.

Iran's refusal to take advantage of the fuel bank
"may give the US and other countries a stronger argument that Iran's
program is really designed to give them a nuclear weapon potential,"
Kimball said.